Conviction (2009) Read online

  He repacked everything but his clothes and stuffed all of those into a garbage bag, except for a pair of dark khaki trousers, a long-sleeved navy rugby shirt, and a pair of brown loafers. Finally, he shaved, showered, re-dressed, and left, tossing the garbage bag into the Dumpster behind the hostel. It was almost nine, so he had an hour to kill.

  In contrast to most of the rest of the city, the hostel itself was contemporary in design, with a stark white-stucco and glass facade; it lay situated between the Pfaffenthal Viaduct, an elevated, arched train overpass, and a park of labyrinthine and concentric hedgerows.

  The city of Luxembourg started in the fourth century as nothing more than a Roman watchtower at the intersection of two roads and remained that way for another six hundred years before the construction of the Lucilinburhuc, or Little Fortress. Over the next three centuries Lucilinburhuc morphed into Luxembourg. For Fisher, who had spent a good portion of the last eighteen months traveling Europe, Luxembourg epitomized Old World charm, with rolling cobblestone streets, some barely wide enough to accommodate two cars; winding rivers and moats; and steeply sloped and spired rooflines.

  Fisher got to the meeting place, a shop-lined alleyway on rue de l’Eau, a few blocks from the Grand Ducal Palace, an hour early, then found a small restaurant with a terrace overlooking a park and ordered breakfast. He hadn’t eaten a real meal in two days, so he asked for uitsmijter—bread, Gouda cheese, Ardennes ham, and fried eggs—along with quetsche tort, all followed up by two cups of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee.

  He felt better, both physically and mentally. He had some breathing room, some time to think and plan before Hansen and his team would reappear. Whether they would be able to track him here on their own, he didn’t know, but he was doubtful: He’d paid for his CFL ticket using cash and an Emmanuel credit card; he’d changed out of his black and yellow Jeunesse Esch- fan outfit before reaching Bettembourg, and both the train and the station at Luxembourg had been all but deserted.

  Fisher sipped at his third cup of Yirgacheffe, then checked his watch.

  Almost time.

  TEN minutes later a slight man with blond hair and wire-rimmed glasses came beetling through the park toward the restaurant. Of course, “beetling” wasn’t exactly right, was it? Fisher thought. Vesa Hytönen’s movements were more birdlike. Somehow Hytönen managed to exude both furtiveness and inconspicuousness at the same time. To passersby he was, Fisher suspected, just another funny little man—a cloistered scientist or a persnickety librarian, someone you found momentarily interesting but almost immediately forgot. If Vesa ever decided to graduate from information cutout to full-fledged agent or intelligence operative, the espionage world might never be the same.

  Of Finnish and Belgian descent, Vesa was, in fact, a scientist—a biochemist—but he also held postdoctorate degrees in European literature and African history and had begun tinkering in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence, both of which were, according to Vesa, merely hobbies to help pass the time.

  When he reached the edge of the park, Vesa gave no sign that he’d seen Fisher but rather turned left down the block, bird-walked his way around a couple of pedestrians, then into a bookshop. He emerged carrying a newspaper in his right hand and headed down the block away from Fisher. Vesa dropped the newspaper. When he retrieved it, he folded it lengthwise and stuffed it into his outside jacket pocket with the top headline showing. Fisher got up and followed. After twenty minutes of dry-cleaning, Fisher decided neither of them was being watched. He gave Vesa the all clear signal—a simple scratch of the ear while they waited, with some other pedestrians, at a crosswalk—then broke off. They met back at the City Central Park and sat down on a bench near a fountain.

  “Good to see you again, Vesa,” Fisher said.

  Hytönen darted his eyes to meet Fisher’s for a moment, then bobbed his head. “And you, and you.”

  “What do you have for me?”

  “I’ve been told that the man you’re interested in will in fact be at his Vianden home for the next three days.”

  The man in question was a man named Yannick Ernsdorff. An Austrian in his mid-fifties, Ernsdorff had until ten years earlier worked as a legitimate, if ruthless, investment banker in Vienna. Why and exactly how Ernsdorff had chosen the profession that had occupied him in recent years was anyone’s guess, but he had become the go-to financial manager to the underworld’s überwealthy. What Einstein and Planck were to physics, Ernsdorff was to the sheltering and laundering of money. To even get the Austrian on the phone, prospective clients had to have a minimum net worth of one hundred million dollars.

  As of late, however, Yannick Ernsdorff had expanded his menu of services to include the role of banker for a very special auction, the details of which were what Fisher required before he could make his next move. With luck, Ernsdorff’s secrets would be the shove Fisher needed to set the dominoes falling.

  “Security contingent?” he now asked Hytönen.

  “I should have satellite imagery by this afternoon.”

  “Blueprints?”

  “The same. I did, however, come across an item in the news that I thought would interest you.” Hytönen handed Fisher a newspaper clipping.

  Fisher scanned it. Yannick Ernsdorff, it seemed, was either a philanthropist or he’d decided the appearance of philanthropy was a deductible business expense: The previous year he’d spent three million dollars building an Outward Bound-style children’s challenge course on the grounds of his five-hundred-acre waterfront estate outside Vianden. Starting that summer, underprivileged children from across Europe could come to enjoy rock-climbing walls, zip lines, rope bridges, obstacle courses, spelunking treasure hunts, and hide-and-seek among dozens of multilevel tree-house complexes.

  “Almost makes me wish I were a kid again,” Fisher replied dryly. “Please tell me this place isn’t named Yannickland.”

  “Challenge Discovery Park,” replied Hytönen. “There’s a website. Many pictures and maps.”

  How nice of Yannick, Fisher thought. “I need you to pass along a few questions.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “One, ask about ROE,” Fisher said, referring to the rules of engagement. “Not mine. She’ll know what it means.”

  “Very well.”

  “Two, our Japanese friend seems to have attracted some attention. I need to know everything she knows. And three, I’ll need all their operational frequencies, both data and voice, and the makes and models of any cell phones they’re carrying.”

  Hytönen nodded. He’d written nothing down, having filed the information away in his mental vault. Fisher had seen a number of keystone spook traits in Vesa, but near the top of the list was his astounding memory. Fisher had no doubt that if asked, Vesa could draw an exact map of Ernsdorff’s property from his brief visit to the Challenge Discovery Park website. Likewise, the queries he’d just recited would be passed along, verbatim.

  “I will strive to have answers by this afternoon.”

  “Thanks. What about the caches?”

  “There are three of them within the borders of Luxembourg, and another four in northern France, eastern Belgium, and western Germany—”

  “No more borders for a while.” More often than not, border crossings went smoothly, but they were in Fisher’s mind a lot like air travel: Most aircraft accidents happen during takeoffs and landings, and the odds of an incident occurring increased with repetition.

  “Of course. The key codes are unchanged, and the equipment is of the penultimate generation.”

  “‘Penultimate?’”

  “It means—”

  “I know what it means. Second to latest. I’ve just never heard anyone actually use the word in a sentence.”

  “Thank you. Standard antitampering measures are in place, so if you—”

  “Everything goes boom.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose so,” Hytönen said with another birdlike head bob. “You’ll want to exercise caution.”

 
Fisher smiled ruefully. “Story of my life, Vesa.”

  THEY made plans to meet again later that afternoon; then Fisher walked a few blocks to a mom-and-pop car agency and rented a dark green 2001 Range Rover. He used a pair of Emmanuel’s sanitized passports and credit cards; he still had the Doucet batch but would not use any of those unless absolutely necessary. He’d ridden that particular trick pony hard during his Esch-sur-Alzette border crossing, and while Hansen and his team would have no choice but to investigate should he use the IDs or cards again, Fisher doubted they would fall for such a ruse so completely again.

  Before leaving the parking lot he got his iPhone, called up the maps application, and punched in an address in Bavigne, a quaint village of 125 souls, sitting along a channel of the Sauer River about sixty kilometers northwest of the city of Luxembourg. He took his time with the drive, exploring and enjoying the Luxembourgian countryside before finally pulling into Bavigne shortly before one. He found a restaurant, the Auberge, and ordered what turned out to be one of the best meals of his life: lobster soup with langoustine tails, Ardennes salad, game terrine on a bed of salad, confit of red plums, and a lemon tartelette for dessert.

  One for the list, Fisher decided. As of late he’d started a mental list of potential retirement spots. Bavigne had just jumped into his top ten. Quiet, secluded, and bucolic.

  He lingered over coffee for another hour, then paid the bill and drove out of town, following the iPhone’s on-screen directions: first heading northeast, then south again along the Sauer, between farmers’ fields and the tree-lined banks of the river, until he crossed over a covered wooden bridge and found himself in a clearing dominated by a log cabin. He got out, mounted the porch, and knocked on the door. There was no answer. He knocked a second time and waited a full minute before circling the cabin and checking windows and satisfying himself that no one was home.

  He walked back to the rear and down six steps to a wooden root cellar door. The padlock hanging from the hasp was relatively new, an all-weather Viro marine model; at the turn of Fisher’s key it snapped open smoothly.

  The root cellar was dark and cool, the temperature hovering in the mid-sixties. Fisher clicked on his flashlight and entered. Momentarily caught in his beam, a rat skittered across the dirt floor and disappeared. Fisher stopped in the center of the cellar, took a moment to orient himself, then walked to the southeast corner, shoved some empty fruit crates out of the way, and set his flashlight on one of them. He knelt down and began brushing at the dirt with both hands until a four-by-three-foot rectangular outline appeared. He felt along the edges until he found a thumb hole and lifted the hatch, revealing a shallow dug-out. At its center sat a black plastic case the size of a large suitcase. It was in fact a DARPA-modified model 1650 Pelican case complete with an encrypted-keypad lock and an antitampering system that consisted of a C-4-shaped charge designed to destroy the case’s contents.

  Fisher lifted the case out of its hole and laid it flat on the ground with the keypad facing him. He pulled out his iPhone, called up the calculator application, then punched in the cabin’s latitude coordinates, subtracted the longitude, and divided the resulting number by the current algorithm, a random four-digit number spit out by the mainframes at Fort Meade every month. Fisher took a deep breath, tapped the code into the keypad, and pressed ENTER. A series of six red lights across the front of the pad began flashing, and then slowly, one by one, began turning green. There was a soft beep followed by a triple mechanical snick.

  Fisher flipped open the latches along the perimeter of the Pelican’s lid, then lifted it. He smiled. “Hello, old friends.”

  FISHER was back in Luxembourg by five. He and Hytönen met at yet another park, this one was across town. As he sat down, Vesa dropped a tiny object to the ground between them; Fisher glanced at it. A key. He covered it with his foot.

  “A storage locker at Findel airport,” Hytönen said.

  “All the information you requested.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I have a special message from our mutual friend. She says there’s a mole.”

  “Say that again.”

  “There’s a mole. Someone inside the group following you.”

  “She’s sure?”

  “Reasonably so, I expect, or she wouldn’t have mentioned it.”

  “Good point.”

  “How or to whom the information is going, she doesn’t know.”

  “But it involves me,” Fisher said.

  “Yes. She is working on the problem, but she suggests, and these are her words, ‘Don’t hold your breath.’ ”

  Fisher smiled. “That sounds like her.”

  “Will you be needing me again?”

  “Probably. I’ll keep you posted via the Lycos account. Check the drafts folder every morning. If it’s more urgent, I’ll leave a message for Heinrich.”

  “I will. Good luck to you.”

  And then Hytönen was gone, walking down the path with his birdlike steps.

  9

  VIANDEN, LUXEMBOURG

  THE next morning Fisher pulled to a stop in a parking lot overlooking the Our River and shut off the Range Rover’s engine. Vianden had just jumped onto Fisher’s retirement list above even Bavigne. Situated in a shallow valley along the Our River, Vianden and its fifteen hundred residents lived in what looked to Fisher like a Grimms’ fairy tale come to life, with gingerbread-style homes in muted pastel shades, cobbled river walkways, and arched stone bridges. He could see castles rising from the mist atop several nearby hills, their lower reaches shrouded in trees. Fisher shook himself from his reverie and got out.

  The night before, after picking up the cache outside Bavigne and meeting with Hytönen, Fisher had first stopped at the airport to retrieve the USB flash drive Vesa had left for him, then checked into the Hilton Luxembourg on rue Jean Engling. He spent an hour going over Vesa’s information. Everything he requested was there: the encrypted frequencies for the Hansen team’s OPSATs; the makes and models of their cell phones; and the team’s rules of engagement—apprehend, maximum priority; lethal force authorized as a last resort. Either Ames had a low threshold for “last resort,” or his live fire at the Esch-sur-Alzette reservoir had been a mistake.

  Next Fisher had turned his attention to the cache and found no surprises. A standard equipment loadout: subvocal transceiver; OPSAT; Trident goggles equipped with night-vision, infrared, and electromagnetic settings; SC pistol; SC-20K AR MAWS (Modular Assault Weapon System) with all the goodies, including ring airfoil grenades, Sticky Shockers and Cameras, and gas grenades; Mark V Tactical Operations RhinoPlate suit; and six grenades (three XM84 flashbang, two M67 fragmentation, and one AN-M8 HC White Smoke). He checked each piece for damage; field stripped, cleaned, and reassembled the weapons; then ran internal diagnostics on the OPSAT and Tridents. Everything was operational; everything felt familiar. It felt good to be back in the saddle, as it were.

  THE scooter shop was two blocks away, beside a restaurant whose patio jutted over the river’s slowly churning waters. Having called ahead, Fisher found the proprietress, a matronly gray-haired woman named Vima, ready for him. She spoke Luxembourgish and a little stilted German, so their conversation was limited, but she beamed and nodded as Fisher inspected the sky blue Vespa scooter, then paid cash for a day’s rental. Within minutes he was puttering down Vianden’s main street, which took him northwest out of town along a series of switchback roads. Twenty minutes later he was descending again, the trees alongside the road giving way to farmers’ fields; the dirt was coal black.

  Ernsdorff’s estate sat on the western side of a kidney-bean-shaped lake a few miles out of town along with four other mansions, each one occupying a section of the southwest and southeast shorelines. Fisher tooled around the lake’s perimeter, occasionally stopping to take pictures, taking care to get plenty of shots of Ernsdorff’s acreage. Even from the opposite shore, almost two miles away, Fisher could see glimpses of the Challenge Discovery Park: labyrinthine ro
pe courses, wooden bridges, vertical climbing walls, and, jutting from the treetops like multicolored circus tents, rainbow-striped tree-house roofs.

  Fisher spent two hours exploring the lake, using his watch’s timer function, his camera, and the Vespa’s odometer to stake out angles and distances he would use that night. Aside from a chest-high, rough-hewn brick wall running along the perimeter of the grounds and a wrought-iron driveway gate set on motorized rollers, he saw no physical security measures. The trees were thick enough, however, that his Canon’s zoom lens could penetrate only a few hundred yards into the grounds; if there were guards, dogs, or more fencing, they were closer to the house itself. These were bridges he would cross when or if they arose.

  Shortly before 11:00 A.M. Fisher saw a white panel van come down the driveway through the trees and stop at the gate, which rolled back to let the van pass. As it turned south, heading back toward Vianden, Fisher zoomed in and snapped a dozen pictures. He called them up on the LCD screen.

  On the van’s side in red letters were the words DATA GUARDIANS INC.

  HE returned to town and, after having lunch at the restaurant next door to the scooter shop, Fisher followed Vima’s directions to Scheuerof, a neighboring village a mile to the north, where he found a family-owned KOA-style campground. It was empty save for a mid-twenties blond couple in red, green, and yellow Rastafarian knit caps, swinging from a pair of canvas chairs suspended from a tree beside their tent. They gave him a wave; he waved back, the brim of his baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. He found a suitable site at the campground’s northernmost boundary. Hemmed in on all sides by thick trees, and accessible by only two footpaths, it lay within a half mile of the bridge Fisher had spotted earlier on Google Earth.